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Authors: Ron Goulart

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BOOK: Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders
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T
he rattling of the train wheels on the tracks had started keeping time with the moderately painful throbbing of my injured head. I groaned quietly, opened my eyes somewhat, and looked down from my upper berth.
“Good morning,” said Jane, who was sitting on the edge of her lower berth. “Welcome to Galesburg, Ohio.”
“How’s that again, girlie?”
“Something I read out the window awhile ago,” she explained. “Seemed like a touching sentiment.”
“That it is.” I sat up as best I could and saw small zigzags of colored light for several unsettling seconds.
“Are you all right?” She stood up clear of her bed, looked up at me with concern.
“You know, ever since I went into the amateur detective line with Groucho,” I observed, wincing, “I seem to be getting hit on the head quite a lot.”
“Perhaps there’s a moral there someplace. You feeling worse?”
“Nope, I believe I’m on the mend,” I assured her. “By the way, why are my sports coats draped over the chair?”
“I was searching for that note you got last night.”
“The one supposedly from Willa Jerome?”
“That note, uh huh. Couldn’t find the darn thing, though.”
“As I recall, I stuck it in the pocket of my plaid coat there before heading for my rendezvous with a blackjack.” Very carefully, like someone who suddenly finds himself up on a skyscraper girder, I got myself down out of the upper bunk and onto the swaying compartment floor. “It’s not there?”
“No. Whoever slugged you must’ve frisked you and retrieved it.”
Feeling a mite woozy, I thrust out my hand against the wall to steady myself. “You said that Willa really didn’t summon me?”
“So she told me last night.”
“Meaning I was lured by persons unknown.”
She nodded, reaching down to her bed for a slip of paper. “This is the warning that Groucho found stuck to you,” she said, holding it toward me. “I was hoping to compare it with the handwriting on the note.”
Jane’s very good at identifying handwriting and lettering styles. Has to do with her being a cartoonist and exceptionally bright as well. Or at least that’s my opinion. You may recall that she helped us that way when Groucho and I were working on that Sherlock Holmes mess last year.
“Any notion about who wrote this warning note?”
She gave an unhappy shake of her head. “Simple block letters and whoever did it was a right-hander using the left hand,” she said. “Outside of that, nothing.”
“Man or woman?”
“Can’t be sure.”
“‘Quit now!’ That’s awfully good advice. Some people would have to pay big money for such a helpful suggestion.”
Dropping the note back onto the bed, Jane said, “I think maybe you really ought to quit, Frank. The next time they—”
“Hey, I am officially resigned from the whole Manheim business,” I assured her.
“You certain?”
“Pretty much so, yeah.”
Out in the train corridor the guy with the chimes went by. “First call to breakfast. First call to breakfast.”
“Oops,” said Jane, snapping her fingers. “We agreed to meet Groucho for breakfast.”
“I was figuring that I’d feel more chipper this morning than I actually do.”
“I’ll go to the dining car, tell him you’re not up to—”
“No, that’s okay. I can make it,” I told her. “You go ahead and I’ll join you in about ten minutes. I just have to dress, shave, and put a plaster cast on my skull.”
Giving me a slightly maternal smile, she kissed me on the cheek and left the room.
I was close to finishing up with my electric razor when there was a tapping on the door. Unplugging the razor, I moved to the doorway. I slid the door open very carefully.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mr. Denby.” It was Emily Collinson, Willa Jerome’s secretary.
“Nope. C’mon in.”
“I’ll remain in the corridor,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Miss Jerome heard that you were injured last night while responding to a note that purported to be from her.”
“That’s what happened, yes.”
Concern touched her pale face. “She didn’t, of course, send you a message of any sort,” the secretary said. “We did discover, though, that someone broke into our compartment during dinner last evening. The only thing stolen was a packet of Miss Jerome’s personal stationery.”
“No idea of by whom?”
She shook her head, unhappy that she couldn’t provide me with any information about that. “None at all, sorry.”
“Well, I appreciate your—”
“Miss Jerome instructed me to inquire as to whether you’d like to have her personal physician, Dr. Dowling, take a look at your head.”
“I already had a Dr. Mackinson do that last night, thanks. He says it’s nothing too serious.”
“Just as well,” said Emily. “Judging by his behavior last evening, Dr. Dowling is likely to be severely hungover most of today. I know I wouldn’t want him poking around with my head.”
I grinned. “We won’t mention that to Miss Jerome.”
She moved a step away. “You don’t work for newspapers anymore?”
“I’m concentrating on radio and movies.”
“You have a good prose style. Your
Los Angeles Times
columns were excellent.”
“They weren’t bad,” I agreed. “But writing scripts is what I really want to do.”
“A shame.”
“You do some writing yourself?”
“Oh, I used to. Short stories, mostly when I was a student at Stanford,” she answered. “Nothing ever came of it. Well, good morning, Mr. Denby, and we’re pleased that you’re feeling better.”
“Thank you one and all,” I said and returned to my shaving.
 
 
W
hile awaiting our arrival in the Super Chief dining car, Groucho sat at his table and whiled away the time by humming a medley of tunes from
The Mikado
and keeping time with his spoon against the leg of the table.
He was midway through “A Wandering Minstrel I,” when a portly fellow at the table behind him, after some impressive throat clearing, said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but my wife and I find that quite annoying.”
Sitting up straight, Groucho slowly turned. “You and your mate are to be congratulated,” he told him. “Myself, I have trouble finding it at all, even with a map.”
Frowning, slightly perplexed, the man said, “What I mean is, will you, please, stop?” His wife, a thin greying woman, was also giving Groucho a puzzled look.
“The real thing you should be fretting about is can I stop,” explained Groucho. “Once, in East Moline, I had a fit of humming that went on for sixteen straight hours. Nothing seemed to halt it, including breathing into a paper sack, drinking water out of the wrong side of the glass, and making a special novena. Finally someone thought of bribery and that turned the trick. Speaking of turning tricks, haven’t I met your wife somewhere before or—”
“Good morning, Groucho. Am I interrupting something?” Dian Bowers, after a cautious look around the dining car, had come over to his table and was standing looking down at him.
“Not at all, my dear. I was merely finishing up my morning vituperation exercises.” He popped to his feet, gestured at the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Sit down, tell me how you’re faring.”
The dark-haired actress seated herself. “Well, actually, I’m damned angry,” she told him. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
“I’d be delighted to, just so long as it doesn’t involve any physical effort or anything beyond a modest outlay of cash.”
She smiled, very briefly “I told you that I’m going to attend the opening of my husband’s play in New York,” she said, glancing once over her shoulder. “It’s this Tuesday night and I’d like you to accompany me.”
Groucho assumed a demure pose and rolled his eyes somewhat. “Golly, and I was hoping you were going to ask me to the Senior Prom,” he said. “But I guess I can escort you to
Make Mine Murder
. Except, of course, I won’t be able to wear my new formal.”
She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Manheim’s still not too happy about the idea,” she confided. “He hasn’t said he’ll try to stop me, but he and Arneson have been urging me not to go. So I’d feel a lot better if someone I trusted came along with me for moral support.”
“I don’t, the last time we checked, have any morals, my dear,” he said. “However, I’ll be happy to see that you get to the opening safely and that no goons, goniffs or producers stop you.”
“I’m staying at the Waldorf,” Dian said. “And you’re at … ?”
“The Edison Hotel,” he answered. “They named it that because they’re hoping to add electricity any day now. Phone me once you’ve checked in. I’ll keep the evening free for you.” He drew a cigar out of a side pocket of his umber-colored sports coat, looking directly at the young woman. “Maybe you ought to start thinking seriously about breaking your contract with Manheim. If he’s going to keep—”
“It’s okay, Groucho. I can, with some help from people like you, handle things,” Dian assured him. “And, well, I still think I want to be a success in this business.”
He dropped the cigar back into the pocket. “The other evening,” he said, “when I stumbled on Arneson and found your beloved producer enjoying an enforced snooze, where were you?”
Her forehead wrinkled. “I was in my bedroom.”
“Didn’t hear anything, notice anything?”
She sighed. “Oh, you’re wondering why I didn’t come out to see what all the fuss was about in the corridor,” she said. “I don’t sleep very well on trains and … I took some sleeping pills. I slept through the whole damned incident.”
“So did Manheim,” said Groucho. “Who do you think made that try at knifing him?”
“Could have been anybody,” Dian said, looking away again. “He’s not a very likeable man. And it’s also possible that the …” She let the sentence fade away.
Groucho cupped his ear. “How’s that again, my dear?”
The actress shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Something occurred to me, but then I realized it was foolish.”
“I have a whole scrapbook full of foolish notions. Tell me.”
“No, really, Groucho. It’s not anything important and—oops. I see Arneson looming in the doorway. I’ll phone you in Manhattan. And thanks.” Hurriedly, she got up and crossed to another table.
Arneson came lumbering in and joined her, after glowering across at Groucho.
Groucho raised his water glass in a toasting gesture. “May you fall off a bridge,” he muttered very quietly, smiling falsely.
Turning in his chair, he said to the portly man, “I’m going to start humming again. Is there any special song you’d like to hear?”
W
e arrived in Chicago later that morning. In the afternoon, after being partially treated to lunch at a nearby delicatessen that Groucho professed to have fond memories of, we boarded the Twentieth Century Limited for New York City.
This streamliner was a bit more sedate in its décor than the Super Chief, going in for grey and silver rather than bold desert colors.
About fifteen minutes out of the station I decided to find a lounge car and get a cup of coffee. Jane chose to stay in our compartment and work on some notes for her next Hollywood Molly continuity. So I was roaming a swaying corridor alone when a voice exclaimed, “Frank! Just the man I want to see.”
A slim arm reached out through the open doorway of the bedroom I’d been passing and May Sankowitz yanked me inside.
After kissing me enthusiastically on the cheek, she sat me down in a chair and leaned close. “Okay, tell me everything you know.”
“Well, it all began when the world was created in the year four-thousand-four B.C. and the—”
“Dope, I mean about what was going on aboard the Super Chief,” she said, giving me a poke in the ribs and an impatient look. “I got a hunch I can sell some stories to the news syndicates—in addition to my regular magazine assignment.”
“You still with
Hollywood Screen Magazine?”
“Not only am I still with them, I was promoted to associate managing editor since last we met.”
“Which means?”
“Fifty bucks a week more.”
May was a small, slim woman getting close to fifty. She was a reddish blonde just now and I’d known her since we both worked for the
Los Angeles Times.
Then she’d run the lonelyhearts column as Dora Dayton. For the past year or more she’d been writing for the movie fan magazine.
“And how come,” I asked her, “you’re on this train?”
May sighed, closed the toilet, and sat on the padded lid. “Manheim persuaded my nitwit bosses that a blow-by-blow account of his new discovery’s arrival in Manhattan would titillate our multitude of moronic readers. So I’m stuck with writing a travel diary—
I Take Manhattan with Dian Bowers
. It means making the last lap of the train ride with the allegedly demure actress and following her hither and yon for her first day in New York City.”
“How’d you get to Chicago?”
She pointed a thumb at the ceiling. “Flew.”
“Welcome aboard. You can have dinner with Jane and me—and maybe Groucho.”
“Skip the sociable stuff, Frank. Tell me about the attempt to murder Manheim.” She leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees.
“For some reason,” I mentioned, “Hal Arneson is trying to keep the whole business quiet. Might not be a good idea to annoy them by trying to cover—”
“Let me worry about that, dear. Just provide me with some juicy details.”
“How’d you hear about it anyway?”
“I know some of the kids in the
Watch Your Step
company and I happened to cross paths with them in Chicago. So?”
I eyed the ceiling for a few seconds. “Okay, and keep in mind that
most of what I know is secondhand,” I began. “I wasn’t a witness to much of anything.”
I then gave May a relatively concise account of what had been going on.
When I concluded my narrative, May stood up, smoothed her skirt and nodded. “If you ask me, kid, little Dian Bowers is a definite jinx.”
“How so?”
“Well, her hubby had a whole stewpot of bad luck trying to get work out on the coast. Nick Sanantonio got himself gunned down in the street. Now Manheim is attacked while—”
“Whoa, wait. What does that dead gambler have to do with Dian?”
May made an impatient noise, sat down again, crossed her legs. “As I understand it, Dian Bowers had a very hot and heavy little romantic affair with the late Mr. Sanantonio. So much so that Manheim went through the ceiling and ordered his sweet little saint to knock it off or he’d make it extremely tough for all concerned.”
“She looks like a very sweet and innocent young—”
“Hey, dummy, she’s an actress, remember? Acting innocent isn’t that tough,” the writer reminded me. “I’m not saying she’s a tramp or anything like that, but she hasn’t been especially loyal to her estranged husband. I hear, though, that she hasn’t given in to Manheim so far.”
“Gosh, between you and Johnny Whistler all my boyish beliefs are getting shattered.”
May cupped both hands around one knee and leaned back. “Sanantonio was quite a tomcat, especially with ladies in the movies,” she said. “For a while, a few months back, Willa Jerome and he were a very hot item.”
“She’s on this train, too.”
“I know, Frank dear, which is why I dropped her name.”
I asked, “Any ideas about a motive for trying to stick a knife in Manheim?”
She shrugged. “Too many candidates for the job,” she said. “A large
percentage of the Hollywood population isn’t especially fond of the guy.”
“Has to have been somebody who was on the Super Chief.”
“Sure, but not necessarily somebody whose name is on the passenger list, Frank,” she pointed out. “Like me, somebody could’ve flown out of LA. Caught up with the train, hopped aboard, made a try for the bastard, and hopped off.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Are you and Groucho doing your detective act again?”
“Not anymore, no,” I assured her and explained about Manheim’s requesting that we lay off.
May said, “The world might be a better place if you guys did forget the whole darn thing and let somebody knock Manheim off.”
“Possibly, although I would like to know who conked me on the head.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t mention that before, Frank. Tell me about it.”
I told her about it.
 
 
A
s Groucho was about to enter the dining car, with a copy of Variety tucked under his arm, a plump woman in a flower-print dress and a fox fur entered the corridor.
She recognized him, gasped, and exclaimed, “Groucho Marx!”
“What a coincidence. That’s my name, too.”
After taking a deep breath, she told him, “My son wants to be just like you.”
“You mean the poor lad wants to be middle-aged, wrinkled, balding, and incontinent?”
“No, no. He wants to be a movie comedian and you’re his absolute favorite,” she explained. “Why, he worships the ground you walk on.”
“Ah, then I’m sorry I walked through the stockyards during the layover in Chicago.”
Smiling and frowning at the same time, the plump woman said, “He’s seen all the Marx Brothers movies at least three times. And he knows every line in
A Night at the Opera
by heart.”
“That’s something. Chico never even knew all of his own lines.” He prepared to circle the woman and push on into the dining car.
She extracted a sheet of blank hotel stationery from her purse. “Could you sign this for him?”
Groucho accepted the sheet, rested it against the corridor wall, and uncapped his fountain pen. “What’s the lad’s name?”
“Stanley.”
“‘Dear Stanley,’” Groucho said aloud as he wrote, “‘your mother picked my pocket on the Twentieth Century Limited. I’ll let it go this time, but if she does it again I suggest you have her carted away. Your humble servant, Elihu Root (a.k.a. Groucho Marx).’”
As he handed the sheet of paper back to her, she said, “You’re a funny man, Mr. Marx.”
“One of us has to be and, alas, the task fell to me.” He entered the dining car.
Jane and I were already there, seated at a table midway along.
“He looks gloomy,” observed my wife as Groucho came slouching toward us.
“He always looks gloomy. Most great clowns are tragic figures at—”
“I bet it has something to do with that
Variety
he’s clutching.”
“Greetings, my children.” Groucho seated himself across from us, placed the tabloid on the table in front of him. “Who would you say, offhand, is the greatest interpreter of Gilbert and Sullivan in the entire civilized world?”
“Martyn Green?” suggested Jane.
“Let me rephrase the question,” he said. “Who’s the world’s greatest interpreter of Gilbert and Sullivan who happens to be sitting at this table with you?”
“You?” she asked.
“Right the first time.” Groucho turned to an inside page of the show
business paper. “Someone left this periodical in the observation car and, borrowing it, I discover therein the news that there have already been not one but two versions of
The Mikado
on Broadway this year.”
“Sure,
The Swing Mikado
and
The Hot Mikado,
” said Jane. “Both flopped, so they won’t be competing with you.”
“Even so, it plants the notion in the public mind that
The Mikado
is a clinker,” complained Groucho. “They’ll think it’s another
Room Service.”
“You’re giving them the tried-and-true version,” I pointed out. “Not a swing adaptation.”
“People will flock to see you,” predicted Jane. “Don’t fret.”
“Well, I have to admit I am a potentially fabled performer in the Gilbert and Sullivan area,” he said with obvious false modesty. “Why, not since the glorious days when D’Oyly Carte first staged
The Mikado
—or even earlier, when they put the D’Oyly Carte before the horse—has anyone performed Gilbert and Sullivan the way I do.”
“All too true,” acknowledged Jane.
He closed the tabloid. “Let’s just hope that Olsen and Johnson don’t decide to do their version,” he said and picked up his menu card.
“I found out something interesting about the case,” I told him.
“We don’t have a case, Watson,” he reminded. “You are but a humble radio writer and I am a roving Savoyard. We are not in the gumshoe trade at the moment.”
“You ought” put in Jane, “to hear this anyway, Groucho.”
“Very well, my boy, you may tell me. But please don’t use that annoying Swedish accent you’ve been affecting of late.”
Nodding, I filled him in on what I’d found out from May Sankowitz about the romances the late Nick Sanantonio had allegedly carried on with Dian Bowers and Willa Jerome. I concluded, “I’m not exactly sure it has a damn thing to do with what happened to Manheim and Arneson. But it is sort of interesting.”
“Like the flowers that bloom in the spring, Rollo, it probably has nothing to do with the case.” Leaning back in his chair, Groucho took a
cigar out of his coat pocket. “Big-time gamblers tend to be irresistible to women. Chico’s the same way. Whereas myself, who limits his activities in that area to bingo and pitching pennies, am notably unlucky in love.”
“Did you know about Dian and Sanantonio?” Jane asked him.
He shook his head. “I hadn’t the faintest scintilla of a notion,” he admitted. “Matter of fact, up until last Tuesday I didn’t even know what a scintilla was.” Unwrapping the cigar, he lit it. “But, since we no longer have any interest in this particular mess, I’m not going to worry my pretty little head about who’s doing what to whom.” He exhaled smoke. “I advise you two cherubs to do the same.”
 
 
T
he streamliner was clacking through the night and we were in the vicinity of Cleveland. From the lower bunk Jane said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“No good will come of it.” Up in my berth I’d been reading the new issue of
Black Mask
I’d picked up at a newsstand in the Chicago railroad station. I estimated I was less than five minutes from dozing off.
“About that newest
Hollywood Molly
radio show synopsis you cooked up this afternoon, Frank.”
“You want to upgrade your rating from ‘okay’ to ‘super terrific’?”
Jane hesitated, then said, “When it comes to writing radio shows, you’re the expert.”
“Absolutely true, yes. But?”
“Well, I’ve done all my own writing on the comic strip,” she continued. “Not that you haven’t been a great help as an editor on the continuities, obviously, and you’ve helped me work out some plot snags and polish dialogue now and then.”
“You forgot to mention that I’m a whiz when it comes to punctuation.”
“Hey, you’re starting to sound like you’re getting miffed up there.”
“I am not miffed,” I assured her from my upper bed.
“All the other sample story lines we’ve worked out to present to the
radio people in New York are just fine,” Jane said. “But this new one of yours … well, it just doesn’t suit Molly.”
“You sound like some movie studio executive.”
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